Saturday, July 21, 2012

Ryanair interested in fly to Copenhagen

The Irish budget-airline Ryanair has recently applied for several slots at Copenhagen Airport for 34 routes across Europe. According to media reports the slots should be valid to commence the routes on 28th October this year. Therefore speculation spreading, whereby Ryanair is planning to open an new base on the airport.

Copenhagen-Kastrup Airport is one of the most expensive airports in Europe and not served by Ryanair to date. But the plans to serve Copenhagen are not really surprising if you regard to the network policy in the recent years: Ryanair has begun to commence bases on various airports with higher fares like London Gatwick and Barcelona El-Prat. Obviously is the possibility to grow on the secondary airports limited and Ryanair tries to tap a marked, which is dominated by carriers like SAS, Lufthansa and easyJet.

An second reason could be the end of Cimber Sterling in May this year. Cimber Sterling operated several services through Scandinavia but also operated an huge network of tourists flights to Spain, Italy and other Mediterranean Countries. The marked is now partly compensated by Norwegian Air Shuttle but could also be interesting for Ryanair.

All in all it is to estimate that Ryanair would have succes with an Copenhagen-base. The higher airport taxed could easy be compensated with higher ticket fares, which easily could be reached in Denmark. Currently Ryanair already flies with big succes to Billund an Aalborg, to cities in western Denmark.